Book picks similar to
Darker by Simon Clark
horror
simon-clark
horror-fiction
supernatural
The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek
Rhett McLaughlin - 2019
Beneath the town’s cheerful façade, however, Bleak Creek teens live in constant fear of being sent to the Whitewood School, a local reformatory with a history of putting unruly youths back on the straight and narrow—a record so impeccable that almost everyone is willing to ignore the suspicious deaths that have occurred there over the past decade.At first, high school freshmen Rex McClendon and Leif Nelson believe what they’ve been told: that the students’ strange demises were all just tragic accidents, the unfortunate consequence of succumbing to vices like Marlboro Lights and Nirvana. But when the shoot for their low-budget horror masterpiece, PolterDog, goes horribly awry—and their best friend, Alicia Boykins, is sent to Whitewood as punishment—Rex and Leif are forced to question everything they know about their unassuming hometown and its cherished school for delinquents.Eager to rescue their friend, Rex and Leif pair up with recent NYU film school graduate Janine Blitstein to begin piecing together the unsettling truth of the school and its mysterious founder, Wayne Whitewood. What they find will leave them battling an evil beyond their wildest imaginations—one that will shake Bleak Creek to its core.
Dark Harvest
Norman Partridge - 2006
They call him the October Boy, or Ol' Hacksaw Face, or Sawtooth Jack. Whatever the name, everybody in this small Midwestern town knows who he is. How he rises from the cornfields every Halloween, a butcher knife in his hand, and makes his way toward town, where gangs of teenage boys eagerly await their chance to confront the legendary nightmare. Both the hunter and the hunted, the October Boy is the prize in an annual rite of life and death.Pete McCormick knows that killing the October Boy is his one chance to escape a dead-end future in this one-horse town. He's willing to risk everything, including his life, to be a winner for once. But before the night is over, Pete will look into the saw-toothed face of horror - and discover the terrifying true secret of the October Boy...
Wet Work
Philip Nutman - 1993
And there was Wet Work." --Tim Sullivan, Screenwriter and director. THE STORY: Dominic Corvino covert assassin, the CIA s top "wet work" specialist.Nick Packard a rookie cop about to undergo his baptism of fire on the Washington DC mean streets. Two different men whose destinies are about to collide as Armageddon unfolds... When a routine hit on a pair of rogue DEA agents goes horribly wrong in Panama, Corvino discovers not only has his team been betrayed from within, but he, too, is marked for death. For Packard, his first day on the job rapidly descends into Hell on Earth when a domestic disturbance turns into a blood-soaked nightmare. As a plague sweeps across the globe, turning normally non-lethal diseases fatal, the dead begin to revive. Violence-crazed and hungry for flesh, they are everywhere. And as their troops increase in size and appetite a new order is steadily established from coast to coast... A new order that leaves no room for the living.
The Bachman Books
Richard Bachman - 1985
Omnibus collection of four early Bachman novels (Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork, The Running Man) and the essay "Why I Was Bachman"
The House
Bentley Little - 1997
Inexplicably, four men and one woman are having heart-stopping nightmares revolving around the dark and forbidding houses where each of them were born. When recent terrifying events occur, they are each drawn to their identical childhood homes, only to confront a sinister supernatural presence which has pursued them all their lives, and is now closer than ever to capturing their souls....
The Golem
Edward Lee - 2009
The original Golem was molded from riverbed clay centuries ago, enchanted by spells to protect the innocent. But now a diabolical design has perverted the ancient, mystical rites to forge new Golems that stalk the night. Into the twilight deeps of the quiet Maryland coast, they come forth, to rape, mangle, and murder, and to bring horror and atrocity to all in their demonic path. Only a young couple can stop them but little do they know, an even worse secret is buried in their own midst...
The Shore
Robert Dunbar - 2007
and a tormented girl struggles to escape captivity. As a winter storm tightens its grip on the town of Edgeharbor -- epicenter for a series of horrible murders -- the scattered inhabitants cower from more than pounding waves. Mangled victims bear the marks of savage claws and strange, bloody footprints mar the snow-covered beach. Now a young policewoman and a myserious stranger are all that stand between this isolated community and an ancient evil.
Jake's Wake
John Skipp - 2008
. . he just didn't say what kind. So when the small-town televangelist and con man climbs out of his coffin at his own wake, it becomes Judgement Day for everyone gathered to mourn - or celebrate - his death. Jake is back, in the rotting flesh, filled with anger and vengeance. And accompanied by demons even more fightening than himself. What follows is a long night of endless terror, a blood-drenched rampage by the man not even death could stop.
Cemetery Of Angels
Noel Hynd - 1995
Their L.A. neighborhood is an oasis of serenity. Nearby is a star studded cemetery, a tribute to the myth and glamor of a Hollywood that has never really died. There is even an eerie legend about their house that the Moores find quaint--until their son and daughter vanish.
The Haunting of Quist House
Amy Cross - 2021
She has no memory, no idea who she is or where she came from. Blood runs from a wound on one side of her head. She hears strange sounds coming from one of the rooms upstairs. She still doesn't remember anything, but she's starting to realize the awful truth.She's trapped inside a haunted house.Not even knowing her own name, the woman starts searching for clues. The strange sounds continue. Is she truly alone, or are there others in the house? And if there are others, are they friend or foe? After making her first shocking discovery, the woman begins to fear the worst. Time is running out. The doors and windows are sealed shut. Nothing makes sense, but a grandfather clock in the hallway seems to offer clues.Who is this woman? What was she doing in the house before she lost her memory? And even if she remembers in time, will she be able to stop the evil that lurks in the shadows?
Awake
Natasha Preston - 2015
She starts to remember pieces of a past that frighten her. A past her parents hid from her…and a secret that could get her killed.
Party Games
R.L. Stine - 2014
But Rachel Martin has a crush on Brendan and is excited to be invited. Brendan has a lot of party games planned. But one game no one planned intrudes on his party—the game of murder. As the guests start dying one by one, Rachel realizes to her horror that she and the other teenagers are trapped on the tiny island with someone who may want to kill them all. How to escape this deadly game? Rachel doesn't know whom she can trust. She should have realized that nothing is as it seems… on Fear Island.R.L. Stine makes his triumphant return to Shadyside, a town of nightmares, shadows, and genuine terror, and to the bestselling series that began his career writing horror for the juvenile market, in the new Fear Street book Party Games.
Autumn
David Moody - 2001
After 99% of the population of the planet is killed in less than 24 hours, for the very few who have managed to stay alive, things are about to get much worse. Animated by phase two of some unknown contagion, the dead begin to rise. At first slow, blind, dumb and lumbering, quickly the bodies regain their most basic senses and abilities... sight, hearing, locomotion... As well as the instinct toward aggression and violence. Held back only by the restraints of their rapidly decomposing flesh, the dead seem to have only one single goal - to lumber forth and destroy the sole remaining attraction in the silent, lifeless world: those who have survived the plague, who now find themselves outnumbered 1,000,000 to 1...Without ever using the 'Z' word, Autumn offers a new perspective on the traditional zombie story. There's no flesh eating, no fast-moving corpses, no gore for gore's sake. Combining the atmosphere and tone of George Romero's classic living dead films with the attitude and awareness of 28 Days (and Weeks) later, this horrifying and suspenseful novel is filled with relentless cold, dark fear.
The Bone Factory
Nate Kenyon - 2009
Until the deaths. First a farmer was found horribly mutilated in his field. Then a little girl disappeared from her home. Deep in the woods a deputy came upon a chamber of horrors straight from a nightmare. And through it all, one child is haunted by visions of the mysterious "blue man," a madman who brings with him blood and pain and terror, a terror spawned by forces no one can understand.
The Feast of All Souls
Simon Bestwick - 2016
But sometimes, the world outside the windows isn’t the one you expect to see; sometimes you’ll turn around and find you’re not alone.An old flame of Alice’s – John Revell – reluctantly comes to her aid when the house begins to reveal its secrets. The hill on which it sits is a place of legends – of Old Harry, the Beast of Crawbeck; of the Virgin of the Height and the mysterious Red Man – and home to the secrets of the shadowy Arodias Thorne.Thorne’s influence seeps up through the ground, infiltrating Alice’s new home, and only she and John stand between Arodias and the rest of our world.